Technical Field
The present invention relates to child safety seats for use in vehicles.
Background Information
It is well-known that transporting children, in particular toddlers or babies, in vehicles is hazardous in the event of an accident. While adults are sufficiently protected by the seatbelts provided in vehicles and, in case of modern vehicles, also by airbags and other safety assistance systems, the existing safety systems installed in vehicles are not designed to sufficiently protect younger people with smaller body sizes such as children, in particular toddlers or babies. So, it is common and in most countries prescribed by law to use child safety seats when transporting children, in particular toddlers or babies, in a vehicle. There is a large variety of child safety seats available on the market with particular designs adapted to particular age groups of children starting with seats for babies (age class 0 and 0+) to seats for children in the preschool ages (seats for age class 2).
Modern child safety seats for use in vehicles are often comprised of a base or base element and a seat element or seat shell. The base is designed to be placed on a vehicle seat and fixed to the vehicle seat by of a seat belt of the vehicle. The seat element or seat shell may releasably be coupled and fixed to the base and features the seat surface which receives the child in a seating or lying position. The seat surface is comprised of the seat area for receiving the rear and the upper legs of the child and a backrest supporting the child's back and, if combined with a headrest, the child's head.
In this regard it is known that vehicle seats are different in their shapes and forms, particularly regarding the seat surface which inclines (or reclines) at different angles, usually reclining from a first free end towards the back rest of the vehicle seat at a certain sloping angle. Depending upon the vehicle manufacturer and the model of the vehicle, the sloping angles of the vehicle seats will differ. The base, however, which has to be placed on the seat and fixed to the same by of the vehicle seatbelt, needs to be arranged in a defined orientation with regard to a horizontal reference line. This defined orientation is essential for a safe and reliable connection and securement between the base and the vehicle seat. Consequently, for known child safety seats the respective bases feature inclination adjustor which allow for adjusting the base in order to adapt the base to a given sloping angle of the vehicle seat surface. Such inclination adjustor may contain support struts or similar support elements that may be adjusted at different positions with respect to a base body. These support struts or other elements then typically rest against the reclining section of the seat surface of the vehicle seat bridging the distance between a lower surface of the base body and the seat surface of the vehicle seat in a declined area. In order to facilitate correct adjustment, such base elements often feature level indicators which by suitable means, for example by of optical indication, indicate to the user when he or she has achieved the correct adjustment of the inclination-adjustor in a way that suitably levels the base so that the base may be securely placed on and fixed to the vehicle seat by of the vehicle seatbelt.
In this orientation the base is then fastened and fixed to the vehicle seat by connecting the vehicle seatbelt to a belt receptacle provided on the base. After that, the seat element or seat shell is connected to the base by interlocking a first connector provided on the base with a second connector provided on the seat element. When the first and second connectors are brought together in the correct manner, they releasably lock the seat element to the base, thus firmly keeping the seat element fixed to the base and thus keeping the seat element safely fixed to the vehicle seat.
For known child seats of that type, however, the inclination-adjustor contain manipulation actuators, for example levers, which are accessible from the outside, for example a side face, of the base even in a situation where the seat element is firmly connected to the base. This is a dangerous situation because it presents the possibility of the unintended manipulation of the actuator. For example, if another child is placed in the seat adjacent the child sitting in the child safety seat featuring the inclination-adjustor, and this other child plays around with such lever actuator, they may accidentally adjust the base inclination. This could lead to a loss of safe connection and fixation of the base and hence of the child safety seat to the vehicle seat. In case of an accident this might lead to a loss of protection of the child by the child safety seat and hence to severe injuries to the child.